The Banquet of Cleopatra is an oil-on-canvas painting by
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, completed in 1744 and now in the
National Gallery of Victoria in
Melbourne, Australia. This is the first of three large paintings of the subject by Tiepolo. In addition to these, the much smaller oil studies or modelli for each of the larger paintings survive. The subject of the painting is a supposed historical episode described by both
Pliny's Natural History and
Plutarch's Lives, in which
Cleopatra takes an expensive pearl and dissolves it in her wine prior to imbibing the drink.Painting credit:
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo